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Article Excerpt
"SPARE ONE OF THOSE?"
"Of course." I shook a Camel out of my pack, which was sitting on the bar as a reminder of better days. She was wearing a raincoat--Burberry; we notice such things--over jeans. It matched her hair, almost; it wasn't buttoned, only belted at the waist. She was three stools away, but I caught a glimpse of a narrow black strap on a narrow pale shoulder when she leaned down the bar to take the cigarette from my fingers.
We notice such things. Especially in a quiet bar on Eighth Avenue, on a rainy Thursday autumn-in-New York afternoon.
She was careful not to touch my fingers; I was careful not to touch hers. I have a lot of respect for cigarettes, these days.
"Thanks."
Her hair was what they used to call dirty blonde, cut short. Full, red lips and a low, smoky voice with eyes to match: dark, deep Jeanne Moreau eyes, filled with a certain sorrowful something. Regret? Loss? Perhaps. She was coasting, like me, on the high side of forty and her face looked it, which I found appealing, and her body didn't, which we find appealing. So many young girls have empty eyes.
"You're welcome," I said.
She sat back and examined the cigarette as if it were a fish she'd caught. Holding both ends in long fingers, very deft. Great hands. A dancer's hands.
Then she lit it!
She tapped it on the bar and put it between her lips and struck a match and lit it.
Inhaled.
Exhaled.
I turned on my stool, alarmed, but the bartender was paying no attention. The little faux bistro--there's one on every block in the west twenties--was empty except for us.
"Excuse me," I said, sliding my drink down the bar and taking a seat next to hers. "But I thought you couldn't smoke in New York bars anymore."
"You can't," she said. "But Lou cuts me a pass every afternoon at about this time, when the lunch crowd's gone."
It was ten after two.
"Extraordinary," I said, tapping a Camel out of my pack. "Perhaps if I pretended to be with you, Lou would cut me a pass, too?"
"Depends." She eyed me sideways. "Are you a good pretender?"
"Good?" I contrived to sound insulted. "I'm the Great Pretender. Plus you'll probably want another anyway." I laid the pack down like a high card. Maybe even a trump, I was thinking.
"As long as we are pretending," she said. "Just don't get any ideas."
"Ideas?" My head was filled with ideas. "I never get ideas."
"I'm here to take a break," she said. "Not to get hit on. As long as you understand that, we can pretend we are friends. I'll even pretend to enjoy your company."
Not to mention my Camels.
"Not to mention your Camels," she added.
Lou did, indeed, cut me a pass. And she did enjoy my company, or at least pretend. And I hers. She was an "Internet worker bee" (or so she called it, then) who worked at home, right around the corner. I was, well, whatever I told her I was.
"Burberry," I said. "An old boyfriend?"
"All my boyfriends are old," she said. "The young are too needy."
"So many young girls have empty eyes," I said, and ordered us both a wine. White for her, red for me.
Her coat fell open when she leaned forward to pick up her glass. I saw the top of a slip, black silk, or something very like it. The strap was loose which told me that her breasts were probably small. But we couldn't see enough to tell.
"What is it with you guys and straps?" she asked, lighting another Camel off the one she was smoking. "It's not like you're actually seeing anything."
Busted. Even honesty is, sometimes, the best policy. "Extrapolation," I said.
"Beg your pardon?"
"Each part suggests the whole. That inch and a half of narrow strap, seen as if by accident, suggests the lacy cup to which it leads, which in turn suggests that which it cups, shapes, presents. That little strap takes the mind's eye to where the eye alone can't, quite, yet, go. Extrapolation."
"Well said," she said. I thought so too. She blew an almost-perfect smoke ring, then looked me straight in the eye and asked: "How many of you are there?"
Busted again. I glanced at my Fauxlex. "Sixty-seven, as of now. They come and go. How'd you know?"
"I read about it in Wired," she said. "Cyberhosting. Private Eyes. It's the new new thing. And a girl can tell. There's a certain--intensity of regard."
"Well said," I said. "And you...
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